On this day in 1951, Ruby Hurley opened first permanent NAACP office in South 

April 28, 1951

Ruby Hurley opened the first permanent office of the NAACP in the South. 

Her introduction to civil rights activism began when she helped organize Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Four years later, she became national youth secretary for the NAACP. In 1951, she opened the organization’s office in Birmingham to grow memberships in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. 

When she arrived in Mississippi, there were only 800 NAACP members. After the governor made remarks she disagreed with, she wrote a letter to the editor that was published in a Mississippi newspaper. After that step in courage, membership grew to 4,000. 

“They were surprised and glad to find someone to challenge the governor,” she told the Chicago Defender. “No Negro had ever challenged the governor before.” 

She helped Medgar Evers investigate the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and other violence against Black Americans. Despite threats, she pushed on. 

“When you’re in the middle of these situations, there’s no room for fear,” she said. “If you have fear in your heart or mind, you can’t do a good job.” 

After an all-white jury acquitted Till’s killers, she appeared on the front cover of Jet magazine with the headline, “Most Militant Negro Woman in the South.” 

Months later, she helped Autherine Lucy become the first Black student at the University of Alabama. 

For her work, she received many threats, including a bombing attempt on her home. She opened an NAACP office in Atlanta, where she served as a mentor for civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, with whom she worked extensively and who went on to serve as an adviser to President Bill Clinton. 

After learning of Evers’ assassination in 1963, she became overwhelmed with sorrow. “I cried for three hours,” she said. “I shall always remember that pool of blood in which he lay and that spattered blood over the car where he tried to drag himself into the house.” 

She died two years after retiring from the NAACP in 1978, and the U.S. Post Office recognized her work in the Civil Rights Pioneers stamp series. In 2022, she was portrayed in the ABC miniseries, “Women of the Movement.”